Pros: Robin Tunney. Clever single set camera work (Rick LeCompte), and editing by Barry Stone.
Cons: The screenplay is contrived.
The Bottom Line: Finn Taylor's script undermines his direction, the camera work, the editing, Tim Blake Nelson, and some mellow 1970's, 1980's music, but Robin Tunney almost redeems the entire project.
When film buff friend Vivian and I sat down in the Kabuki 8 Complex at the 45th San Francisco Festival for CHERISH, we knew a bit about local film maker, Finn Taylor. His first film, DREAM WITH THE FISHES (1997), despite some tortured contrivance, had been promising. As we were soon to see, CHERISH, his second effort, accentuated both Taylor's strengths and weaknesses. A new element was Robin Tunney, the comely beauty who, after nearly a dozen parts in TV, several supporting roles in movies, took a lead role in 2000's VERTICAL LIMIT. If this quirky comedy has any success, we concluded, Writer-Director Taylor might be able to claim he made Tunney an "overnight star." She is very good in CHERISH.
Tunney plays Zoe Adler, a post hippie commercial artist who suffers from low self-esteem. No amount of help from her therapist (Lindsay Crouse) or her Yoga instructor (Phil La Mar) will raise it. She works for a large San Francisco company, typical of the commercial warrens which America has made another Model for the World. [Reminiscent, too, of the City setting for Josh Kornbluth's recent sharp satire, HAIKU TUNNEL.] We see her meandering awkwardly on the office floor, day dreaming, or hiding in her cubicle, listening through headphones to 70's and 80's music hits from her favorite retro-radio station. Using the title of The Association's song "Cherish" as her handle, she continually places requests, and the afternoon disk jockey indulges her.
Lonely Zoe does not find her dates so indulgent. Her coltish awkwardness, her lack of social experience, her living-in-the past manner put off the self-absorbed young men she meets. As she says, "I wouldn't date so many guys if one of them would call me back."
It is a mark of ripe, buffed Robin Tunney's skill at creating Zoe that she can get away with a line like that.
One night, after one too many Martini's, Zoe is car-jacked, and while struggling with the man, she inadvertently causes a policeman to be run over. In the confusion, the car-jacker slips away, and Zoe is judged responsible while DUI. She is arrested and charged with negligent manslaughter.
Fired from her job, soon destitute, on the mercies of a public defender, and a victim of the justice's delay, Zoe agrees to take part in a "bracelet program" until her trial date. That is, she submits to having an electronic band riveted around her ankle, and she is given the run of a large second floor loft, South of Market. Checked at regular periods by phone, she can go 57 feet in any direction from a transmitter which keeps tabs on her. Beyond that boundary, an alarm will sound at headquarters, and she may be back in jail.
Every week she is monitored in visits by an Officer Daly, played by the talented actor-director, Tim Blake Nelson (O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? and O). Daly also seems to have a business relationship with the company which makes the bracelet device, naturally drawing Zoe's resentment.
As weeks become months, Zoe utilizes her time and artistic talents to decorate a home for herself, but after an aborted effort at carnality with a pizza man, boredom or curiosity eventually tempts her to violate the terms of her agreement. She begins to explore the nooks of her space, literally stretching out in her yen for contact with other humans. For instance, she at first irritates and then charms Jimmy (Adam Del Rio), a dwarf in a wheel chair, who lives down stairs. She observes life on the alley below her window, angering but eventually attracting a gang of neighborhood teenagers. She hears rumors of a fabled garden on the roof, which inspires her to scale a shaft above her closet. On that adventure, she surreptitiously discovers that her third floor neighbors are a pair of endlessly passionate Serbo-Croats.
In the process, she keeps in shape and comes to self-realization.
Meanwhile, her legal visitor, shy, uptight Officer Daly, transits from cold professionalism, to sympathy, to infatuation. He begins doing her favors and running errands for her.
And then one day, she receives a phone call from the car-jacker. He is stalking her.
CHERISH is made up of one-third comedy, better than one-third a coming-to-maturity study mixed with romance, and the rest is labored thriller. The movie is at its best when Rick LeCompte's camera obsessivelly follows Zoe. We are beguiled by her goofy ways. We wonder with her who is taking her picture. We root for her when she is wrongly accused. We notice her hair growing longer, the walls of the flat accruing her art, her depression prompting comic feats, and we are intrigued, but whenever the plot intrudes, we stop laughing and empathizing with her plight. We begin to ask questions about the story:
How could a sexually active young woman like Zoe really have no relationships? (Bad character development.) Who IS that guy taking her picture? (Good question.) Is he the car-jacker? (Perhaps, we're on to something.) Does the City and County of San Francisco really lease large loft spaces to house single manslaughter suspects? (Credibility problem.) Where does she get money for her food and sundries? (We never learn.) Is such a Rube Goldberg scheme as "The Bracelet Program" the wave of law enforcement in the future? (Recent studies say, no, not until the bugs are solved.)
CHERISH is amusing, but it is also irritating.
As Vivian and I left the theater, after watching Finn Taylor bask in the applause of loyal fans, and hearing him share Tunney and Nelson cell-phone conversations with us, she said to me: "With an actress of her charisma, an interesting character to play and Tim Blake Nelson at her side, why didn't Taylor take more care with his script?"
Full of holes, we agreed. Too bad.
See CHERISH to observe a budding Star in Robin Tunney. (She's almost worth the price of an admission.) See CHERISH if you remember songs like "Tainted Love," or you collect the music of Hall & Oats and similar groups from the 1970's and 1980's.
Otherwise, wait for it on Video.
BTW, if it is any incentive, Jason Priestly is type-cast in a small role as one of Zoe's inconstant hunk boyfriends.
CHERISH is slated for Nationwide release by Fineline Pictures on June 7, 2002.
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UPDATE: June 18, 2002 -- CHERISH proved to be a modest sleeper hit among Summer audiences, thanks to the scintillation of Robin Tunney. Critics also praised the ingenuity of Director Finn Taylor.
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To read Macresarf1's review of HAIKU TUNNEL follow this URL:
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